FENRIR: Chapter 18

[seawasp]

They're actually BUILDING this darn thing!

 

Part III: Carpathia

 

Chapter 18: Big Job

Time to Launch: 605 Days

Peter Flint of International Inspection Systems pushed the brim of his cap up, tilting his head and squinting against the brilliant early-fall Nevada sunshine. "Well, ain't that a sight and a half."

     Masses of construction equipment – gigantic excavators, dumptrucks that made the ones usually seen on public roadways look like Tonka Trucks, cranes meant for skyscraper construction, and more – were at work everywhere, almost as far as the eye could see. More track for sidings and shipment depots was still being laid, and probably would be for another couple of months.

     But everything centered here, and Pete's eyes were mostly on the incredible expanse of metal in front of him. Even in the 102-degree weather, the heat radiating from a hundred thousand tons of metal felt like an open oven at many meters away.

     "How hot is she?" he asked Werner Keller.

     "About two hundred C," the Project Engineer for Carpathia answered. "Four hundred degrees, for you Americans."

     Pete chuckled. "I know I'm an old man compared to most of you, but I have gotten used to metric, even if I still think in the old units. Why, I even have a smartphone and use the Internet on occasion." Werner acknowledged that with his own grin. "That's pushing it a bit, but I think we can manage it. I was told time's of the essence?"

     "Very much, yes, Doctor," Werner said.

     "Pete, please, I'm just a contractor here, not presenting fancy papers."

     "Then yes, Pete; and you may call me Werner." Werner Keller had a slight German accent but his English was perfect. Pete regretted not learning German, but he'd always expected Spanish or Japanese would be the up and coming languages. "More pressure than we expected, and that, as they say, is saying something."

     "Oh? What's the additional rush?"

     "We had three plates under construction simultaneously," Werner said, "using three different processes. One was being assembled using fairly conventional welding techniques, if you can call anything about Carpathia conventional; the idea of that one was to have several layers with different assembly patterns. This would provide no specific weak points for the plate as a whole. Unfortunately, we found that despite trying multiple techniques, the layers just could not be kept tightly bonded during assembly."

     "Yeah, I can see that. And the other?"

     "The most ambitious explosive-welding project ever attempted," Werner answered, "and it mostly worked. Probably could be made to work given a couple of years to work things out, but we don't have that."

     "And this beast?" Pete gestured to the dully-shining expanse before him.

     "The largest single cast ever." The pride was clear in Werner's voice. "I admit I had the highest hopes for this one, but it was, as you might imagine, a challenge."

     "I can imagine, yes." He could see remnants of many pipes around the perimeter. "Controlled cooling embedded in the mold, I see."

     "As much as we could manage, yes. We wanted some hardening in the underside of the plate, but only so much."

     "Sure; you want it to take the impacts but not be brittle."

     "So you think you can inspect the whole plate without us having to lift it?"

     "Pretty sure. This is an almost ideal design for my purposes, honestly," Pete said cheerfully. "Aside from a few attachment points, it's just a single plate with an almost uniform thickness. Back when I started IIS I probably would've said the same, but would've told you it'd take about a year."

     "A year?" The Project Engineer grimaced. "We cannot afford anything even vaguely that long!"

     "Of course you can't. Bid I made said two weeks and two weeks I mean it to be. Or less, maybe." He waved at the titanic pusher plate. "That there's something close on eight thousand square meters of steel to cover on the top, and back in the old days you'd be lucky to cover a couple square meters a day, with two inspectors."

     Werner nodded. "Scared me for a minute there. So you use ultrasonic inspection?"

     "EMAT – electromagnetic acoustic transduction – with some proprietary wrinkles in how we vary the amplitude and frequency for inspecting at various depths, not to mention controlling beam angle and some very fancy signal analysis techniques my programmers came up with," Pete said. "Couldn't use standard ultrasonic up there – all the couplant gels and liquids I know of wouldn't like those temperatures at all. Air-coupling might work, but that has other issues. Leavin' that aside, you haven't polished it much yet, so the surface roughness might mess up standard ultrasonics."

     Werner frowned, clearly trying to recall something. "How does EMAT work? I remember the term vaguely but I can't quite remember."

     "Pretty simple in concept. You know of course that a varying electromagnetic field can exert force on a conductor, right?" At Werner's nod, Pete went on, "Well, imagine if you generated a really powerful electromagnetic field at a high frequency, and put it right next to a conductive object. What happens?"

     Werner thought a second. "The object vibrates."

     "Exactly! And in a nice big piece of solid metal, that vibration's sound. So if you do these vibrations in quick pulses, you get the same input as a regular ultrasonic inspection, except you don't need couplant gels and even surface corrosion or paint won't get in the way."

     "But how do you sense…" Werner's eyes lit up. "Ah, yes, I see. The same or similar coils that make the pulse will sense the return vibration, because the motion of the conductor then creates an electromagnetic signal you can read, as long as there is a magnetic field present."

     "Got it. So it's basically like sonar in steel, and flaws show up as unexpected reflections, or sometimes dead spots where there's no returns."

     "Which I hope you do not see, as we cannot afford flaws."

     Pete seesawed his hand. "Well, I expect I'll see some flaws. Something this big, first time ever made? Almost certainly there'll be something; nothing's perfect. Question is whether it's big enough to be a problem, and I certainly hope I won't find any."

     Werner looked around. "Where's the rest of your team?"

     "Got a couple of my engineers on the way, but I can get started before they get here," Pete replied. "When do you want me to start? Anyone got anything to do with that plate before I get to it?"

     "No, until we know it is usable there is no point in doing more work," Werner said. "You can start as soon as you're ready."

     "Perfect. I was told you'd have a nice big 240-volt source for me?"

     "With a high-speed secured net connection as well, yes. If that is your equipment, we are already moving it into position."

     Werner had pointed to what appeared to be a standard 40-foot cargo container, with the IIS logo stenciled boldly on each side.

     "That's it. Put that end," he pointed to one of the narrow sides of the container, "near the power; that's where I have the connectors."

     With only moderate effort the container was deposited in the indicated location. With an economy of motion that showed long practice, Pete opened a sealed port on the container and made the connections. Two green lights came on, and Pete grinned. "Outstanding."

     "How long will it take to unload everything?" Werner asked. "Should I get you some people to help?"

     Pete grinned. "Don't need any help, Werner. Stay right there!"

     He unlocked a door built into the side of the container and ducked inside. Yep, lights show green. The air inside the container was, unsurprisingly, stifling, but as Pete activated the main systems, a click and hum preceded a flow of cooler air. Screens lit up, showing status, and he grinned. Everything shipped great for once! It was something of a crapshoot each time they shipped; about half the time, something had gotten disconnected, jammed, or otherwise messed up enough to need a couple hours to put it right, but this time he saw nothing but green across the board.

     He popped back outside. "Sorry to keep you waiting, Werner, but excuse an old geek some theatrics." He checked by eye to make sure there was nothing in the way, then said, "And now, just stand here, and you'll see why I don't need help."

     He stepped back in and hit one control.

     Instantly, most of one long side of the container – thirty-two feet, to be exact – dropped away, forming a ramp to the ground outside. Within, sitting in identical little bays, were eight squat rovers, each one about a meter wide and slightly more than that long. A short sensor mast projected above the main body, though there were also cameras and lights inset into the front and rear of the rover. They were driven by broad treads, and there were low, contoured vents at each corner. As the ramp locked into place, lights came on in each bay and on each rover.

     "IIS's Mobile Intelligent Rover Operations Center, or MIROC," Pete said proudly. "IIS started in inspections, and that's still our core focus, but MIROC, with the right mods, gets used for everything from big inspection tasks to remote maintenance to even things like search-and-rescue. All controlled from the little front office here."

     Werner looked appropriately impressed. "Autonomous functioning, then?"

     "Variable autonomy, but in this case, mostly autonomous. Expect I'll have a lot of little tweaks to do on them – they've never inspected anything quite like this before!" He looked speculatively out at the shining-metal expanse. "Probably have to set up some kind of duty cycle to keep the main electronics cool enough. They're all high-military spec, but unless you go to some of the crazy silicon-carbide chips, electronics just do not like temperatures hot enough to fry eggs, and the rovers' cooling can't keep up with that for too long, especially out there in the middle where there won't be anything but hot air. Probably need liquid cooling, but I've got provisions for that."

     He pointed to the undercarriage. "EMAT head won't mind much, though. Electromagnet plus the send-receive coils, all of those could take a five hundred degree bath pretty well after we used high-temp solder on them. So, limiting factor's gonna be the electronics in the main shell."

     He laced his fingers together, cracking the joints once. "Now if you and your people can just get me a ramp for my toys to get up on that plate, I can get started!"

  



Time to go to work!